Awesome wearable computer setup is powered by Sony VAIO UX UMPC

Another gem from the geniuses at www.micropctalk.com. MPCT forum user fiveseven808 has created a wearable computer setup using a Sony VAIO UX380 [Portal page] to power the whole thing. Fiveseven808 was kind enough to give me a good run down of the setup and some images as well.

Essentially he took the MyVu headset, removed one of the eye pieces, and mounted the other to his glasses to that he could see his surroundings and the UX’s screen at the same time. The MyVu is attached to the UX through the A/V output port on the UX’s port replicator dongle. With some additional addons he provided his UX with extra battery life via an external battery, and several input methods to communicate with the UX while the rest of the kit resides within the backpack.

Unfortunately I must report that fiveseven’s UX380 recently died due to some physical failures, but I got a chance to talk to him about his initial vision for the project:

I guess my original goal was to design a prototype wearable computing system that is expandable, cheap, compact, yet powerful enough to be used as an every day computer with the possibility of having augmented reality systems and other passive information systems convey useful location based information to the user at all times.

I had a chance to speak with fiveseven and have somewhat of an interview with him that I’ll share in the near future. You’ll be able to read fiveseven’s comments on the project. I personally found this setup, and the idea behind, it very cool. Here is to hoping that he manages to track down another UX to continue his work.

Hehe, thanks for the advice. I saw those hosted on tech blogs a while ago, and they do look very promising. The optics look much heavier than what I’m using though, and the weight of the HMD is very important if it’s intended for use longer than the length of a movie. AR is definitely on my list of things to integrate into the system, but there is no currently available software to give it any practical application (unless you were in Japan and had the 2d barcodes everywhere).

Thanks for the links to the glove too. I didn’t know there was a commercialized type of glove like that. Sadly its much too expensive for my purpose and it’s wired. I already have plans for gloved based input systems that are much cheaper and already specialized for my purposes.

Can you use video glasses screens for PC work.
I have recently tested connecting a PC to video glasses with 640×480 resolution. These were the Vuzix DV920 model. Yes you can use it to view a PC screen clearly, but the writing is microscopic and almost too small to read. I changed my PC resolution to 640×480. It was more readable but less fits on the screen. I tried writing a Word document using the video glasses but I needed to enlarge the page to 200%. Not much fits on the viewing area and it is difficult to type when you have the video glasses on. I recommend going for a display of 800×600 but this is not cheap. Using 320×240 will be impossible to use!

I am going to hack a 320×240 video glasses display so I can produce a monocle version like fiveseven808. I am then going to hack a Casio portable TV – remember the small battery operated models? These have an AV IN jack which I am going to recreate into an AV OUT jack. This will allow a TV signal to be ported into the video glasses giving portable TV. Since the TV screen will be switched off it should save a lot of battery power. The Casio TV is analog which works in Australia for the next three years, but not as a digital receiver.

What was the total cost? (if you don’t mind me asking) I would bet that there would be a large demographic that would purchase a complete system like this might not necessarily have the time/knowledge to build it themselves. You could think about possibly marketing this device soon as some of these new connectivity technologies are getting closer..

Why did you not use a jailbroken iPod touch to drive the display? Was it a matter of computing power?

Cracking the case on a touch and wiring the camera into the display would be extremely interesting, especially for AR type tasks. I’m not sure what the signal attenuation would be, though, so the touch might need to be mounted near-head (center of the back, for example) for it to still work.

I’m afraid I have to be a negative voice here. The device is nifty as a toy but is of limited practicality. Try working with it for eight hours straight. The Sony VAIO UX380 screen is bad enough to work with navigation using the eyepiece is not practical. Still, it is pretty darn cool.

It would probably be much easier. Think of the new T-Mobile Android – its operating system is a modified version of Linux OS. Since Linux’s primary goal is to be adaptable to any needs, I’m sure that any developer willing to donate time to this effort would be able to do it.

If I had to guess, I’d guess that the corrective lenses are easily removable from any set of glasses. It’s really the lowest-tech thing you could change about the whole system, so what’s your problem again, exactly?

I was going to use an arduino to co-ordinate and decode the glove signals to feed a better input to the PC, and update the display software to use low-res versions (try accessability settings for limited visibility users) to make things easier to read.

Over the years, I found that research in wearable computing took a back seat to other forms of mobile computing. While Thad Starner and Steve Mann from MIT were working on wearable computers at MIT, I also jumped on the research bandwagon in 1998 and focused my work on wearable computer interfaces. I created a multi sensor glove that could recognize the shape of objects I held in my hand, plus used a modified chorded keyboard call the twiddler. We used linux as the os, and wide use of vi, emacs, and other text based software.

Just don’t try using this while driving. If these devices become more common, there will be some idiots that try to use this and drive. I can see the headline: “Pedestrian Killed by Driver Using HUD”
Subtitle: “State Government May Pass Law Banning Use While Driving”

This glove would be much cheaper http://www.theperegrine.com/ but it’s not out yet! Also how about using http://www.openpandora.org as the computer? (yeah I know also not out yet) Even if the screen is small on the eye piece, I think I would something with more resolution than 600 X 800.

One of these days there will finally be a pair of glasses with the LCD built into them. Until then I just can’t see something like this being adopted by the masses. Really awesome proof of concept though, I would love to have one!

That is awesome, however I’m good with my iPod Touch, and HTC Hero. It gives me all of my internet fix, and online jones without all the wires. I think we need to make this device wireless and make it more like a tiny internet cell phone device. Not sure the application for it yet….

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